Website to Help Parents Understand Autism - Help?

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I need your help! My younger sister has Asperger's, and throughout her life we've consistently run into issues with people not understanding what that entails and the resulting problems. Recently we had two particularly large issues - one with her roommate at college and one with our new stepfather. Neither of them knew/know anything about autism, except for some vague idea of social skills issues, and more understanding would have smoothed relationships all around. I realized that my family can't be the only one with this issue, so I made a website, autismspectrumexplained.weebly.com/, aimed at taking someone from 0 to 60 (with spots for someone with more background to jump in) with regards to understanding autism, what it really means in real life, the gifts people with autism can have, separating fact from fiction, and more. It skews higher functioning just because that's what my sister is, but my hope is that it can help others, too.

The thing is, I know the website could be better and I don't want to really start promoting it until I've gotten feedback on it. My worst nightmare is to promote this thing and actually have written something that wasn't what I intended to say, find out that I'm misrepresenting people on the spectrum/associated organizations, etc.

That's why I need your help! If you guys could check out the website and answer a few questions for me (or just give general feedback; the questions are for guidance if you need it, they aren't required and you can answer as many or as few of them as you want), I would super greatly appreciate it!

1. Would this website have helped you understand autism when your loved one was first diagnosed? Why or why not?

2. Are there any additional topics that would have helped you understand autism/helped friends and family members understand it (and that can add to the website)?

3. Is there anything in the website that you really disagree with/think I messed up on?

4. Do you think the website could be helpful for understanding people on all ends of the spectrum, or just high functioning? If the latter, advice on how to remedy this problem would be greatly appreciated.

5. Would you give this website to friends/family to help them understand autism? Why or why not?

In addition, suggestions as to format are also appreciated.

Any and all advice is helpful! Thanks so much!

I'm by far not an expert on creating websites and all that but I went through it and I found it to be really interesting and accurate enough ( obviously hard to write down every single thing people on the spectrum have to deal with 'cos it's so varied).
I'd definitely show it to my friends and relatives so they can get a simple and clear idea of what aspergers is .
In my opinion its a very good website as its not too formal to get bored and lost in .
Just my opinion ,good work .

The first two sections, "The Autism Lingo" and "Introduction to Autism," do not really cover sensory issues. And the claim in the drawings, "Apparent insensitivity to pain." Wow. Well, sometimes, okay, I guess sometimes that is true. But sometimes I think it's kind of the opposite.

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I am not a parent. I am a person who lives my life on the Spectrum. I am self-diagnosed and am comfortable with this (and I think often people my age will be self-diagnosed).

Thanks to both of you for the advice!

Actually, I wasn't fond of the graphic, either (best I found, though), which is why I inserted a giant disclaimer of a paragraph underneath. That said, I can just write it out instead - my concern and the reason I went with the graphic in the first place, though, is that people may get intimidated by a lot of text and not read it, which is why Introduction to Autism is so picture/video based. I'm figuring if people stuck around for Autism: The Specifics, they're probably really interested and not likely to get scared away from the website, which is why I'm okay with that being a lot of text (although you'll note there's still a lot of videos there).

Sensory issues are covered in the next page on the list, Autism: The Specifics. If you think there's an issue with layout/order, though, feel free to mention it. I split the information up into three basic pages (Lingo, Intro, and Specifics) because otherwise it turned into a beastly long page that I was concerned people might get intimidated by/not read all the way through. That said, if you think it's better, I can definitely mash together Autism: An Introduction and Autism: The Specifics, or Lingo and Intro, or all three. The issue of people getting intimidated by the sheer number of articles may prove to be worse than them getting intimidated by the length of an article. To hopefully reduce that problem, since reading your feedback I've put the less important pages (still very important, but not quite as much) under the Misc tab. Let me know what you think of the new look.

Most autistic traits are not present in every autistic. Apart from some degree of social impairment, I can't think of any one trait that is 100% among autistics.

Insensitivity to pain is certainly a trait of a subset of autistics (I heard of one high functioning girl who broke her arm and didn't notice, even trying to join a volleyball game). There are also some who do feel pain, but don't show it outwardly, or only feel pain if they aren't hyperfocusing on something. Both of which would be 'apparent' insensitivity to pain.

which explains some stimming, some of the time.

Other times it's just really satisfying to get into something, which is why people seek out experiences like white-water kayaking, or enjoy the experience of listening to music while driving.

And not being a parent, no, I probably don't know how embarrassing it is when a kid stims in public. I can understand intellectually, but in my gut, probably not.

And I guess masturbation is the obvious analogy. It's a good, healthy activity for private, but not at all appropriate for public. So, I am all in favor in teaching and modeling more discrete, more low-key stimming for public.

I'm also in favor of activism and publicity---like BigSister's website ---so more nonspectrum people can be relaxed and accepting about stimming. So when someone fiddles with a pen while talking on the phone, it's so common it's hardly worth remarking on, but in point of fact, this is a stim.

Interestingly, I didn't even think about the website as falling under activism and publicity until you said something...I always thought of it as an educational tool, but I suppose you're quite right. Thanks for all the help!

I haven't had a chance to look through it thoroughly, but it looks pretty good on the surface. Maybe one point I didn't come across as a "myth" is that all people with autism are obviously affected. Because my daughter looks "normal enough" at first--both physically and behaviorally--sometimes people assume she can't possibly have autism. But maybe that is covered somewhere else.

Also, my biggest grief with Autism Speaks wasn't mentioned: the paltry amount of their immense enterprise that is actually used to help real, live people living on the spectrum. When you compare that to the large salaries collected by their top officers, it becomes rather clear that their goal is not really to help autistics. I don't have references handy, but I imagine there are others around here who do.